Sappho

(9,631 words)

(Ψάπφω/Psápphō or Σαπφώ/Sapphṓ; Latin Sappho)

A. Historical dimension

S. (c. 600 BC) was and is the most famous female poet of Antiquity. Like her countryman and contemporary Alcaeus, she wrote in the Aeolian dialect of Greek, but in both metre and language (neologisms, composite words) she was particularly versatile and inventive. Terminological and thematic elements of her surviving work show that she was well-versed in the epic tradition (Homer, Hesiod; Homer) and earlier poetry (esp. Archilochus). Her transformatory resonances anticipate the intertextual te…